Monday

[altivo]

Started with a breakfast in town to celebrate the boss's birthday before opening the library. This also runs up the kickoff of another year for us, since we're at the turn of the fiscal year. Unless our assistant building engineer comes (he's husband of the primary housekeeper) I'm normally the only male at the table, so I'm oddly left out of much conversation anyway. More and more of late, though, everything seems to be about grandchildren, a thing I don't have and don't want. So I try to smile and not complain.

My head is clearing, too slowly but still, it is. No medication since getting up this morning, and I'm still breathing. The cough remains a primary nuisance, and at the moment I feel as if I'm losing my voice. Still, things are definitely improved from a few days ago.

We watched a cardinal convention in the yard during supper tonight. I counted at least half a dozen bright red males and as many females. Much competition for attention, including a move I'd never seen before as one male chased another down the ridgepole of the barn... afoot. Running like chickens or something, wings folded. Another amusing bird antic observed today was a large red bellied woodpecker driving a bluejay right off the feeder by aggressively pecking him. Normally bluejays are the top bullies around here, except maybe for full sized crows, but no one argues with those woodpecker beaks. They're like sharp pencils.

Yay for short weeks. (The library is closed on Friday.) Alas, not a short week for my mate though. Holy week is hell for choir members, and he still isn't over the virus entirely himself. I warned him that if he tries to meet the full schedule he had last year, he'll lose his voice before Sunday for sure. Not that he'll listen to me on this.

Preparing a new PC to replace the one on the boss's desk, I realize that she and the circulation manager use Quicken for accounting stuff. OK. They both have it installed, and use it to share the same set of files on a network server. After some hunting, I found the installation CDROM. They're running a version from the year 2000 that has received no upgrades since. Gack. The CD says "for Windows 95/98 and NT4." Their current machines are running Win2K, the replacements have WinXP Pro. I wasn't even sure this old program would load and run. It does, though, or seems to. They'll have to decide whether it still functions correctly, I'm not familiar enough with it to know. She promised to test it seriously tomorrow. I didn't push for an update as long as it works. They both resist having to deal with change unless there is no other option, and I'm not interested in being the one who has to push it. Anyway, what I know about computerized accounting would fit in a peanut shell with one half missing.

I can remember the basics of double-entry bookkeeping, and really don't want to revisit it. XD

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I've had to reinstall Quicken 2000 on computers over the years. It's kind of persnickety about registering, or maybe I just don't know how to register it once I already have done so on a prior machine. (Software manufacturers never seem to allow for the fact that you might replace a computer but not the software.) When I got the new computer, I was in the throes of going back to a paper checkbook register -- still not sure of the wisdom of that, but I wasn't making Quicken work for me anymore, so I didn't bother reinstalling it on my new machine.

There, that was a lot of help, wasn't it?

I liked your bird tales. Makes you want to have a video camera trained on them to capture their antics, doesn't it?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Gary is addicted to Quicken. It came preinstalled on a machine I bought back in 1995, and I played with it briefly before deciding that entering all that junk into the computer wasn't serving any useful purpose for me. Then, I'm the kind who has a rough running balance in his head and never balances the checkbook. I've never bounced a check, either. Gary took the installation disk for that freebie and put it onto his machine and has been using it ever since, dutifully upgrading each year. I feel he spends more time on budgeting and data entry than is justified, but it keeps him entertained. And he can tell me to the penny how much I've spent maintaining three horses in the past year, if I want to know. He's running the current version though, not the 1999 version that I just reinstalled at work today. I just skipped over the registration part. Is it going to cry foul and quit working in 30 days or something?

Birdwatching is amusing. Last week I saw a starling trying its darnedest to get into a bluebird house outside the library. The hole is too small for starlings, of course, but this one was determined and would stick its head in then flap its wings for all it was worth...

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Starlings aren't very bright, y'know, just prolific. (Of course you knew that. :-)

I think Quicken runs OK if you don't register it. It nags for a while, then gives up. There might be some features that wouldn't work, but I think they're all interactive web things that I never did use.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I keep envisioning a starling trap thingie to get rid of the nuisances. Something like those mosquito traps that burn propane to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor that draw in the mosquitoes and then suck them into a fan and drowns them, you know...

We were plagued with starlings until we figured out where they were nesting and cut off their access. Unfortunately, I haven't found a similar way to get rid of the sparrows. Messy, disgusting birds.

Thanks for the Quicken information. I suspect you're right, and there was certainly no serial number or anything like that so probably it will just keep running. I'll ask Gary what his current version does. It's hard to believe how much licensing paranoia has changed in a decade.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Quicken is annoying, MYOB seems to behave much better and is preferred here over Quicken. I like MYOB ^.^

Was it the Wood pecker who's tongue actually wraps around inside their head because it's so long? Not to mention all the sinewy material it uses to protect it's brain during that immense hammering they do with their beak.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Money is annoying. No, not the Microsoft product, the crinkly pieces of paper. That's why I don't have any. ;p

Yep. Woodpeckers have such long tongues that they have to curl around inside their head, around the back of their brain and over the top and then around one eye. All for the sake of eating grubs and such. I think I'll take a pass.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Short weeks are good.

*turns green a moment at the sick day he used
from a combination of pain meds and Indian food
he'd never had before...and never will again*

As for grandkids...well, the joke I use on my
wife is;

"The kids will be grown up soon...but you know,
they could have kids of their own right
off, then we'd be young grandpar -"

*SWATSWATSWAT!!!*

@.@

"What!?"

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but even short weeks have a Wednesday in them and here it is again. I feel like I should be back home in bed.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Your the boss.

*you are back home in bed, everything
is taken care of at work, of course the
horses now talk and they are complaining
that they are not "boys"*

@.@

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool. If they can talk, then they can listen. "You want more time in the big pasture? Quit challenging the fence and trying to get around it, and I'll see what I can do."

Actually, at age 14 they should both be glad to be called "boys" and especially so since they're missing some bits.